Nanites Summer Agenda

Friday July 11 - last day to send "individual" robotics and research proposals to the coaches.

All the following meetings to be held in Simon's house.

Sunday Aug 3 - 4:30pm-6:30pm (practice session)
Sunday Aug 17 -4:30pm-6:30pm (practice session)
Friday Aug 29 - 7pm-9pm (summer projects graded by peers and coaches). Please send in your final written projects by e-mail before the meeting.

Card dealing robot

I probably will build a slightly different version of a card dealer when I get around to it. I used to play bridge regularly and it would really be nice to have a robot to deal the cards for me. It will need to be more sophisticated than the one shown. It has to deal 4 sets of 13 cards, randomly, well, randomly speaking.

Making your own Wall-e with NXT

I like what I saw. Anyone wants to build it?

NXT Machine Gun

Two views of the NXT Machine Gun entirely built by Simon.

http://picasaweb.google.com/kingsum.chow/2008LegoProjects?authkey=apKXuMPZf-U

How to Take Good Photos of LEGOs

I learned a lot of how to take better photos of LEGOs.

New Season for Climate Connections

http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=70

Let the new season begin with summer project assignments that will help you prepare for the new challenges. The assignments are not ready yet but they should be ready before the last day of school.

A collection of old video for Nanites's Robots

1. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2878333684982442565&hl=en
2. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6052590439230021451&hl=en
3. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7201057868417850831&hl=en
4. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4438485948573508375&hl=en
5. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5204025358765068785&hl=en
6. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3492848498976757920&hl=en

Some really cool NXT robots...

NXDave has some really cool NXT robots. Check them out.
http://mindstorms.lego.com/nxtlog/projectlist.aspx?memberid=179e28a0-323b-44f2-8cff-9cc088e7879d&username=NXDave

About HTK Open

The Nanites like the HTK FIRST LEGO League International Open. The organizers did a good job in communicating almost every aspect that we need to pay attention to before and during the tournament. Their scoring system for the entire event seems reasonably fair too. Our team did not win any trophy but they were happy to be in the 12th place overall. We had very strong competition within our bracket in our strengths, e.g. team work and programming, so we did not get call backs. We were happy that Brothers Keepers (also in our bracket) got the call back as we bonded with them right from day 1. We also made good friends with other teams such as Some Assembly Required. We were fortunate to be in the same alliance with these two teams, along with Roboloco from Columbia. We did well enough as an alliance to be placed third (out of 16) in that event. We really like the concept of the alliance event and perhaps we can try a mini version of that in Oregon?
The kids visited all other teams and shared our brochures and collected giveaways from them. They played together with many other teams. They had so much fun that sometimes they forgot to come back to practice. I guess that is the spirit of the tournament - have fun and enjoy! Many teams visited us and took photos with us too.
The judges for research, team work and robot design were all very friendly and encouraging. Many teams were very friendly and showed the spirit of FIRST as well. It is indeed a very friendly competition as teams are helping each other. For example, Some Assembly Required offered us parts that we did not bring along.
As for our own team, the only low point is our robot did not perform there, The robot used to score about 390 points failed to score above 300 points in the tournament. Thus the kids have a good lesson.

HTK International Open is Over Today

The Sylvan Nanites were happy to be placed 12th overall (out of 63 teams and 11 countries) with a balanced scores in all categories except that the robot that used to score ~390 points could not run properly on the tables. The kids enjoyed the 2 days of tournaments and met many new friends in very friendly competitions.